Chronicles of the Stars
by aGuestfromGreece45
Summary: In the far future, humanity has managed to finally explore and colonize the stars, to unite under a banner for a common cause. But with the rapid expansion of its territories, humanity has met and made a lot of friends, and a lot more enemies. Follow the adventures of Sergeant Miho Nishizumi as she tries to save her new home and make sure her past doesn't repeat once again.


**Chronicles of the Stars**

**Chapter 0: Prologue**

* * *

Chaos.

Chaos everywhere.

Wherever she looks, the young woman can only see fire and smoke filling up the battlefield in which she finds herself, the comms flaring up with shouts and screams of orders and requests for support.

"Load the next canister!" she shouts at her headset's microphone, then ducks inside her tank's cupola as a laser pulse barely misses her head.

"Canister in!" the loader shouts, closing the plasma cannon's breech.

"Charging!" the gunner reports, so the young woman stands up from her seat and peeks over her cupola, her headset's visor showing her all important information.

_*Vzzzzt!*_

Suddenly, a red laser beam strikes the tank's upper hull plate, a blue-colored, energy shield made of hexagons appearing out of thin air.

_"Shields at 85% and falling!" _the radio operator shouts in the intercoms, before the beam vanishes and the tank stops shaking.

"Gunner, enemy Levitator at 1 o'clock, distance is 500 meters!" the young woman screams as a jet passes over the battlefield, drowning every sound with its engines' deafening roaring for a moment.

_"Tracking!"_

_*Craack!*_

The tank violently shakes, the energy shield appearing once again as something strikes the tank, the woman gripping the cupola's edge to stabilize herself.

_"Shields at 50%!" _

Her light brown eyes dart around the battlefield, her headset's visor highlighting the different enemy units with a red contour.

_"Enemy Levitator in sight! Canister fully charged!"_ the gunner announces.

"Fire!"

A purple-white ball of superheated plasma leaves the cannon barrel, streaking through the air and striking the enemy tank at center mass, the plasma effortlessly cutting through the unshielded armor and entering the crew compartment, instantly killing the crew.

Another violent shaking is felt as a metal rod strikes the tank, this time the shields not only appearing, but also flickering.

_"Shields at 15%!"_ the radio operator screams as an alarm starts blaring inside the crew compartment, the loader grabbing yet another canister as the breech ejects the spent one, then quickly loads the new one._ "We can't take more hits!" _

_"Canister up!"_

_"Charging!"_

_*Boom!*_

_"Arrow leader, this is Arrow-3! We just lost Arrow-2, I repeat, we just lost Arrow-2!"_ a panicked voice says through the comms, and the woman glances to her left, only to see a tank similar to hers going up in flames.

**[Arrow-2: No survivors detected.]** her visor reads, and the woman clicks her tongue.

"Gunner, enemy railgun at 11 o'clock, 700 meters!" she shouts, the enemy barely inside the plasma cannon's effective range.

_"Acquiring target!"_

Looking at the enemy's tank, its contour starts flashing and an energy chart appears next to it.

"The enemy is about to-!"

_*Craack!*_

Before she can even finish her sentence, the enemy fires, another metal rod colliding with the tank and disabling the shields.

_"Commander, the shields are out!" _the radio operator screams as more alarms start blaring inside the crew compartment.

"Grr! Driver, reverse!"the commander shouts as several warnings pop on her visor. "To all units, retreat to the secondary line of defense! I repeat, retreat to the secondary line of defense!"

_"Target in sight!"_

"Fire at will!"

As the tank jerks in motion and starts reversing, a plasma ball leaves the barrel and flies towards the target, striking the armor and causing an energy shield to appear.

_"Shot ineffective, enemy's shielded!" _the gunner reports.

"How much time before the shields are back?"

_"Two minutes!"_

**[Warning! Enemy particle lance detected. Two seconds to impact.]**

Widening her eyes in shock and horror, the commamder barely opens her mouth to order everyone to abandon the tank, before a red streak of energized particles strikes her tank's right side, penetrating the armor and instantly killing the radio operator, as well as grazing and setting off one of the canisters and releasing superheated plasma inside the crew compartment.

The woman herself barely manages to escape the plasma, climbing through her cupola and jumping over the turret's edge in the nick of time.

"Gah!" she shouts painfully as she crashes on the ground on her back, her whole body aching with her clumsy landing.

Groaning in pain, she slowly lifts her head as her headset's visor starts displaying a variety of errors, mainly about losing its connection with the tank and being unable to reconnect to it. Lifting her head just enough, she looks at her legs, which seem to have been horribly gotten burnt by the sudden temperature change of the released plasma, her uniform's pants singed up till her knees, and her boots looking almost like wax ready to melt.

_"Arrow leader, can you hear me!? Arrow leader, what's your condition!?" _a voice screams through the comms, which prompts the woman to push herself to sit on the ground and stand up despite the excruciating pain that grips her legs. _"Miho, answer me!"_

"I'm... fine, don't worry..." she says through gritted teeth as she limps her way to the back of her tank in order to take cover from the enemy. "My legs are on a bad shape, though..." she groans, barely having the strength to stand up. "What's the cut-off detachment's situation?"

_"They said that we managed to pull off a sizeable amount of the enemy forces that had surrounded them and have successfully broken through to safety, but the left flank in the main offensive has collapsed! Command has ordered a complete retreat back at Kyoli fortress!"_

"Dammit..." Miho says quietly to herself. "Staff Sergeant, call for a wide-area orbital strike on my position, this should stall the enemy long enough for us to retreat!" she says through the comms, then breaks to a sprint towards the remaining tanks of her platoon.

_"Copy that! Requesting orbital strike now!"_

Miho then undoes the strap of her helmet and takes it off, throwing it away as laser pulses start passing besides her, either missing her by a few millimeters, or landing on the ground around her and burning the purple grass that covers the dirt.

_'Come on! Just hold on for a little longer!' _she thinks as her legs start numbing considerably, her speed faltering with each step she takes closer to Arrow-3's tank.

Arrow-3's cupola's hatch opens and a man half-exits from the tank with a headset like the one Miho was wearing.

"Lieutenant, the orbital strike is inbound in 10 seconds!" he shouts over the sounds of gunfire and munitions bouncing off of the tank's energy shield.

"Hah... hah... order everyone... to retreat!" Miho shouts back, her panting becoming more and more heavy with each second. But as she approaches Arrow-3, a dozen or so rockets impact its side and a large fireball consumes it, before yet another jet passes overhead, even trying to strafe Miho but missing by a wide margin.

"Garland!" Miho shouts as she sees the now burning commander of Arrow-3 fall down on the ground and screaming in agony, though he quickly goes silent as the fire consumes his body.

_*BOOM!*_

Stopping dead on her tracks, Miho barely has time to look behind her as a shockwave washes over her and throws her away like a ragdoll, harshly landing on the ground head first and getting knocked out dead cold.

* * *

_"Two minutes to dropout, please put on your seatbelts."_

Hearing the robotic voice, Miho groggily opens her eyes, then rubs them with her left hand while looking around. Admittedly, the transport she is in currently barely has any people, around four if you count the pilots as well.

_'Ugh... which drop is this... the fifth? This should be the last one.'_

Yawning a bit, Miho stretches her arms, then straps herself on her chair.

_'At least the Ooarai is always on reserves or the backlines, so I should be fine...' _

Miho looks at her hands, her fingers slowly curling to fists.

_'They died because of me... why was I the only one to survive...? They deserved to live, not me...'_

Sighing audibly, Miho rests her head against the shuttle's wall as it shakes violently, indicating that it has exited warp.

_"Dropout complete. Please remain in your seats until the shuttle has docked," _the robotic voice announces, and so Miho leans her head a bit forward, looking at the man that has been discreetly glaring at her for the past three drops, a briefcase resting on his lap.

_'He must be an officer...'_ Miho thinks as she scans his uniform._ 'A captain, perhaps? Oh, he's from a coreworld... Earth!? What is he doing to a planetfaller like the Ooarai?'_ Miho thinks alarmed, cautiously looking at a certain badge on the man's uniform._ 'No wonder he's been glaring from the moment he laid eyes on me. It's been months since the incident, but I'm still as hated as ever by people from coreworlds...'_

Sighing from her nose, Miho looks to the side, as if peering out from a window.

_'I just hope it won't be the same in the Ooarai...'_

Around ten minutes later, the shuttle gently shakes as it docks at one of the Ooarai's hangar bays, its thrusters slowly dying as the engines get turned off.

Miho and the officer undo the straps of their seats and stand up, but as he passes in front of her to make his way towards the shuttle's exit, he says something quietly to her.

"You are lucky you still have uses," he says in contempt, causing Miho to stay in place and look at his fleeting form.

_'Haah... let's just hope he'll be in an entirely different sector from me...'_ Miho thinks as she starts walking towards the shuttle's exit.

* * *

**At the same time, in a different part of the spaceship**

Walking through the metal hallways of the Ooarai, a single, short woman with reddish-brown hair and reddish-brown eyes makes her way towards a certain office, her expression betraying her slight anxiousness despite her best efforts to mask it.

Her black, high-heeled shoes loudly echo throughout the hallway as she turns left on a T-shaped intersection, then stops in front of a certain door.

_'Alright, calm down, Anzu, everything will be fine,'_ the woman thinks as she closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then opens them and firmly knocks on the door two times.

_"Come in,"_ a voice is heard from the other side of the door, and so Anzu opens it and enters inside, then closes it.

Walking till the middle of the room, which only has inside it an office desk with two chairs in front of it, a few file cabinets, a coffee machine on a table and a potted plant, the woman snaps a salute.

"Colonel Adams, sir," she says in a clear and audible voice at the man sitting behind the desk, who in turn looks up from the documents and reports he was reading.

"At ease, First Lieutenant," he says, and so Anzu lowers her hand. "Thank you for coming in such short notice."

"I was told you had some urgent news for me, sir," she says steadily, trying her best to mask her anxiousness.

"Yes. As you know, lieutenant Kadotani, the era of the High-Orbit Troop Deployers, or 'Planetfallers' as troops like to call them, is fast approaching its end. The age when these ships could take over an entire planet on their own is long gone, and Kuromorimine's failed operation on Volton-7 is a testament to that. Therefore, the higher-ups have greenlit a plan to decommission all HORTDs and either retrofit them to actual warships or scrap them entirely."

Anzu widens her eyes in shock, her body stiffening.

"Due to Ooarai's age and... current use as nothing more than a reserve pool for replenishing units throughout human territories, it has been decided to be the first one to be scrapped."

"But Colonel, this ship is our home! They can't just-!" Anzu says loudly, before she abruptly stops as Adams raises his hand towards her to sign her to stop, with Anzu's face paling somewhat upon realizing what she did.

"I'm fully aware of this, Lieutenant. I've been on this ship since before you were assigned here, and I consider it my home as well."

Lowering his hand, the man opens one of his desk's drawers and retrieves a few documents and a manila folder.

"The army's workings are surpringly simple when it comes to some matters, Lieutenant. If you are useful enough, they'll keep you around." Anzu wants to ask what that has to do with Ooarai's predicament, but she simply nods. "If we prove that Ooarai is worth keeping around, then they won't scrap her."

"Then, if I may ask, Colonel, how will we do this?" Anzu asks slowly.

"By earning achievements in the battlefield."

Anzu looks at the man baffled for a few seconds.

"May I speak freely, Colonel?"

"Go on, Lieutenant."

"Even if that's a way to save Ooarai, how we'll we even do that? We are always on the reserves, and all of our troops are green. We have the strength of only two infantry divisions, no vehicles or aircraft to speak of, and even our equipment and weapons are outdated."

"I have a few friends in high places, Lieutenant, so I can assure you that we'll be in the frontlines soon enough. As for the rest, we are not looking to bring back the days of old, but rather evolve and prosper. I hope you understand what I mean."

Adams then pushes towards the edge of his office desk the documents and the manila folder, looking Anzu straight in the eyes.

"As of today, First Lieutenant Anzu Kadotani, I officially declare you leader of the newly formed Ooarai Task Force 731. These documents contain everything you might need to know, as well the people that will be under your command. I'll send someone to deliver their personal files to you later."

Anzu gazes at Adams, then at the documents and manila folder, literally being speechless at the current turn of events.

"The road will be a harsh one, Lieutenant, but it's our only option. I hope you can achieve great things."

Anzu walks in front of the desk and takes the documents and folder, then snaps a salute.

"I won't disappoint you, sir!"

"Good. You may go now," Adams says, and Anzu exits the room. As she closes the door behind her, Adams sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, then stands up from his seat to go to the coffee machine. Filling up a plastic cup with some freshly brewed coffee, a knocking sound is heard from the door, so he turns to look towards it.

"Come in."

The door opens once more, and in comes the man that was with Miho on the shuttle. Closing the door, the man gazes at Adams for a few seconds, before he finally talks.

"John."

"Mike."

"I brought what you asked for," the man says and slowly raises the briefcase he's holding, with Adams nodding in response.

"Good. Come, take a seat. We have a lot to talk about.


End file.
